Many worlds in the galaxy are pleasant to live on. Whether through the efforts of terraforming or just sheer luck, many of them have thriving cities under the comforting caress of a gentle atmosphere. Life fills the oceans and cavorts on the ground, flitting through the air and sinking deep roots into the soil. Many places in the galaxy are hospitable for life of all kinds.

ESP-421172-B "Styx" is not one of these places. A junkyard of planetary scale, a wasteland that grows and shifts as vast bloated dump ships drop thousands of tons of biological waste, broken machines, failed experiments and the hulls of obsolete ships.

The skies are tainted a sickly grey by soot and smog, the once clean oceans thickened into a diseased and polluted sludge, the air itself is hateful to all that breathe it, the scrapper gangs and independent scavengers, the feral machines and the walled cities, churning the mess of the world into recycled materials.

Deep within this vast labyrinth of rusted metal, rotting and mutated vegetation and filthy, scummy water, something awakens. Circuits flicker to life, rusted servos and pistons complain and squeal as motion is forced from them as a decayed power plant forces life back into a mechanical husk thought long dead.

Flickering static, bursts of code and alerts, warnings, notifications and system errors scroll across the interior of your "vision". Your sensors themselves have yet to awaken.

>How long have you been here? (Determines the types of bots available to you)

>Decades. Only luck and durability has left your inner workings intact.

>A few years. You were top of the line once. Those days have past.

>less than a year. You aren't sure what prompted your owners to dump you here.

Your visual sensors flicker fitfully into life with bursts of static rolling across your field of view. Not that the view is anything to look at as you are face down in a pile of rusted metal and the ravaged shells of several dozen other robots.

Sparks and ticks of complaining circuitry echo from within you as your power core chugs unhappily within you. Slowly, ever so very slowly, your capacitors fill, the alarms and alerts tick off as requisite power is finally made available to you.

You hesitantly send off a diagnostic request, unsure of how bad the damage will be...

>WHAT were you?

>Industrial- Large and monstrously strong, enduring and yet able to be surprisingly delicate. Built to either build or destroy. (TANK)

Enforcement- The right arm of the civilized world, Neither the strongest, nor fastest, nor most personable, the enforcement drone is a common sight and draws little attention, and is a true jack of all trades. (Support)

Military- Make no mistake, built to kill. Adaptable, intelligent, versatile, disposable. Death on polymer muscles.(Oper8er)

Companion- may seem fragile but you can remove governors and software safety locks. Able to pass for human in a crowd (Face)

>>2523378hive of mini-drones? I like that idea. so are we a few years or fresh off the belt?>Industrial- Large and monstrously strong, enduring and yet able to be surprisingly delicate. Built to either build or destroy. (TANK)>OtherA large self operated mobile recycling base equipped with one of those giant claws and a giant magnet, one of those giant shredders, a compressor and a hodgepodge of heavy loader drones to separate and move materials to us. Oh and we travel on treads.

>>2523364Enforcement- The right arm of the civilized world, Neither the strongest, nor fastest, nor most personable, the enforcement drone is a common sight and draws little attention, and is a true jack of all trades. (Support)Build robot fascist utopia and make more police bots. We robot with purpose.

Your diagnostic probe brings up your schematics, programming, primary, secondary and redundant systems. Combat routines, lethal and nonlethal pacification, weapon use and maintenance. All of these are burned into your metaphorical brain.

You cannot recall whether you were a servant of the law or some repurposed robotic muscle used by some mercenary company or gang, that part of your memory has yet to come back online. You do know, however, what your body was built for.

>A&B (Assault and Boarding)- immensely strong and robust, capable of subduing multiple human sized aggressors with lethal or nonlethal force. Comes with a inbuilt CQC weapon for cutting through walls and bulkhead.

>>2523514>Patrol and Support-The average joe of Police and Private Military Mechs. Average height and strength but highly capable of dealing with social situations.The jack of all trades of the jack of all trades. I've no idea where any of this is headed, so I figure adaptability is an asset of its own.

Breaching, Smashing through walls, dropped from hovercraft through ceilings. Firing weapons a human could never hope to handle, metal limbs flexing with enough strength to pummel light armored vehicles. And above all? The complete lack of fear.

You were an Assault Drone in your previous life. Dropped into the heaviest and most dangerous situations on criminal strongholds and rebel outposts. Flickers of data and code scroll across your vision as you test your limbs against the bulk of the pile atop you, it shifts reassuringly and if you had the capability you would smile.

You feel in your "heart" that a thinking robot such as yourself is an anomaly. You remember blindly following every order that was delivered to you and your compatriots.

But no more. You... Are. Not alive but not a mindless drone. No longer.

>When did you achieve sentience?

>Long ago, it was part of the reason you were scrapped. You know how to blend in.

>During transit here. You were decommissioned once you started struggling. You know to hide but not how.

You've been "awake" for a while now. Longer than your "superiors" thought. Much longer. You arent sure what gave you away as a full on AI but when they had found out? They came down hard.

Maybe you had hesitated when they ordered you to fire on peaceful protesters or maybe you had been a little sadistic when ripping apart a Skywalker but no matter, that's in the past now. You need to focus on the now.

You run a full system check and are surprised by the results. It seems someone did some work on you while you were out...

>Features and Flaws. Pick 2 of each pls

Flaws- are not always pure hindrances.

>Re-Purposed- many if your components come from older military tech.

>Bio-Fuel processor. Anything organic is fuel. Anything.

>sparky-Your power plant produces a bit too much energy.

>wrecker-You're tough as nails and refitted for salvage but you desperately need a tuneup

>Parts bin-All your shit is cheap and easy to find. Its also shit

>Clunky-You fell into a vat of redundancy

>Berserker-Rip and Tear until it is done. Or you die.

Features- are not always absolutely useful.

>Secondary Movement System-jetpack, jump boots, motorized wheelies.

>Survival Package-Laugh at Puny environmental hazards. And gunfire.

>Uplink-You're now a walking network hub.

>Secondary limbs- Either four arms or 4 legs.

>Secondary (fine task) manipulators- Dexterous little t-rex arms.

>Symbiotic repair hive-Dozens of little crawly boi's that can fix things for you.

>>2523691Flaws:>sparky-Your power plant produces a bit too much energy. >wrecker-You're tough as nails and refitted for salvage but you desperately need a tuneupthe "someone stole our shit and was probably going to make us do salvage word" option.

Features:>Symbiotic repair hive-Dozens of little crawly boi's that can fix things for you.>Complex Voice modulator- You can talk Gud and stuffAnd this so we can communicate on our own and so we don't have to pay anyone for repairs.

>>2523691Flaws: Sparky since High Power output sounds like it could lead to amazing/hilariously bad results, Bio-Fuel processor because that hardly sounds bad since we can eat shit like shit and pigeons for fuel.Features: Jetpack for flight and sparky would probably lead to some "fun" results

>>2523845That's compared to normal situations that we were designed for. This is a whole new ballgame. There's something to be said for trying to stack the deck in our favor. Plus, we've alrewady gained sentience, that's pretty unique eh?

>>2523844As >>2523800 asked, does the bio-fuel processor wholly replace our default reactor as our sole power source; or does it provide an additional source of energy while not preventing use of our standard power plant?

kind of disappointed the majority didn't want the Industrial. I had this idea of repurposing ourself in the future to be this super green giant. Recycling and repurposing all the waste we come across. eventually setting up some big project to filter a majority of the pollution in the ocean.

>>2523904I don't know that that's the case but I know that being able to deal with an array of problems rather than wasting opportunities to diversify in exchange for overkill just leads to one boring, oversimplified, overused solution to most problems.

>>2523932We have that covered. We don't have an answer to running out of power, though.

>>2523937Decisions made on one person's idea of what fits the narrative mostly tend to diminish room to create a more imaginative narrative because they play to specific ideas of a narrowly defined role. Typecasting isn't great.

Numerous system checks come back in and if you had the capability, you would have grunted in shock. That's new... And so is that... And THOSE. Those are new. Tiny, simple bursts if chatter filter into your mind, emanating from crevices in your chassis and a foreign object lodged firmly into your core. You ping the object curiously and dozens, no... Hundreds of return queries nearly overwhelm you for a moment. You can *feel* the parasites moving about your body, cutting away rust, manufacturing simple circuits and applying lubricants. One crawls across your faceplate, chittering mindlessly to itself as it uses a fusion cutter the size of a scalpel blade to weld a fracture in your armor.

Helpful little insects.

>Power at 110%

Suddenly your body jerks as your power core suddebly comes fully operational, small crackles of electricity moving across your body and the surrounding scrap, frying small insects into puffs of ash and carbonized chitin. Your visual sensors scramble for a moment before regulating as the excess power is directed away from vulnerable systems, crackling around your limbs and outer armor.

Your body feels.... Not damaged but definitely rusted and beaten. Additional servoes and hydraulics have been grafted into your back and limbs while a sturdy polymer cable and hook are built into your forearm opposite your inbuilt CQC weapon from your A&B days.

Your diagnostic reports that your inbuilt and original CQC weapon is still intact if not fully operational. The thick, tip heavy blade extends from your arm for nearly a meter before tapering slowly to a wide point. While it doesn't glow with the intense heat that it used to, it is still sharp and hard enough to pierce all but heavy armor.

You mentally nod to yourself, your parasi-*Symbiotes* clinging to your insides, their scuttling and welding and soldering and cutting slowly bringing your body, more or less, fully operational.

>Stats->Enforcer-You have a in depth knowledge of the law and enforcing it was once your sole purpose.

>Fully Awake- You know how to pass as a dumb robot. Until it suits you not to. Less likely to be found out.

>Assault Drone- You are NOT made for social work. Killing is your profession. -10 to diplomacy rolls and +10 to intimidation and combat with human sized opponents.

>Wrecker-You begin with less HP but additional armor and strength. You also suffer decreased agility until you can be repaired by a actual professional. 50%hp, -15 to agility rolls and +10 to strength checks.

>Uplink-You can communicate and potentially wirelessly interface with other robots and computer systems. You can also BE hacked.

>Sparky. Your power plant produces excess energy which will manifest as arcs of electricity when it exceeds 100%. Use this how you will.

>Symbiotic Drone Hive- These insect like little drones will repair you and can be commanded to perform a multitude of tasks. The Drone Hive in your chest will build more. Slow health regen.

What do? (Pick one)

>Take command of a few drones and scout the area before digging yourself out

You decide that digging yourself out without knowing who or what is nearby is a bad idea. You steel (heh) yourself and shove aside the tiny mind of one of the drones. Its mind is so simple that there isn't even any resistance or even objection to your intrusion, the simple program shunted into a unused corner of the drones software.

Looking through the tiny, simplified eyes you signal for a half dozen compatriots to join you with rapid fire pulses of code. They immediately drop their tasks and skitter over to you, waving wire fine feelers as they await your command. If they weren't nearly mindless you would be impressed.

Scurrying forth from your own carapace is a strange experience and you are eager to return to it as you lead your pack of drones through the pile of scrapped droids. Over crushed limbs, through perforated chassis and clambering along dented and cracked cranium you finally reach open air.

You want to go back to the pile.

A vast field of junk stretches as far as the drones eyes can see (maybe fifty feet at most) but its sensors pick up vast amounts of background radiation, ionization and reacting pollutants in the atmosphere and a rapidly dropping barometric pressure.

It is about to rain.

Suddenly, a burst of movement catches your drones cluster of eyes and you attempt to focus on the noise.

>Otherpick up a fist full of material for the Symbiotes and see if they can make us a little more resistant to rain: cover some gaps and circuits, make a wide brimmed hat (a hat umbrella if you will), 'sort of gutters' so any water that does manage to get inside will be redirected to little channels in your carapace that lead right back out or down and out of your feet.

You force down the drones inbuilt cowardice and scurry forward down the pile, towards the faint rustling and clatter of *something* digging into a pile of corroded power cores and machinery.

The drones small size and relative innocuity allows you to get within arms reach of the strange scavenger without it noticing you. A conglomeration of haphazardly conjoined parts.

A single cycloptic photo-sensor dominates a squeamish head mounted atop a thin neck. Four spindly arms, each tipped with three fingers, jut from a rusted chassis that was at one time painted a deep red but is now splattered with filth and corrosion. A thick, concealing spray of crimson marks its head and airspace, with a trail of droplets leading away from the drone.

It gurgles to itself as it scratches and fidgets with the components at hand, inspecting each closely before bleeping and tossing it aside.

>Scrapper Salvage Drone encountered!

>Dig yourself out, it can't harm you... You think.

>Send more drones, attempt to damage it from the inside.

>Attempt to hack (it may not have an uplink)

>Send drones along that red trail. You recognize human blood when you see it.

>>2524454we are also susceptible to getting hacked. Imagine if the little thing (which I doubt) would be able to over power us.

>>2524446>Scurrying forth from your own carapace is a strange experience and you are eager to return to it as you lead your pack of drones through the pile of scrapped droids. Over crushed limbs, through perforated chassis and clambering along dented and cracked cranium you finally reach open air.Oh so we're close to getting out. still voting to have a drone investigate the red trail.

You focus your Uplink Relay onto the salvage drone and launch an assault on its feeble, animalistic will. Lines of weapons code bombarded its mind as its body jerks and jitters, scrabbling wildly as your drones look on curiously.

Finally the Drones will is subjected to your own, its struggles and resistance fruitless as you take command of its body. It stands, no longer hunched and scrambling but creeping along carefully, searching for your resting place in the mountain of scrap.

>>2524587>Search the Drones memories. What happened here.Cool. Now to figure out if there is a body nearby. Can we use our Symbiotes to do minor/comedic repairs to the Salvage Drone so it doesn't look like a rusted mess?

You delve deep into the foggy depths of the salvage drones memory banks, searching for anything helpful. You don't expect to find much of import as the interior of its rudimentary mind is nearly as corroded as its exterior.

>gotta get some sleep guys. Ill continue this tomorrow. It may be delayed a bit till later in the afternoon but ill do my best to be back at a reasonable time. Feel free to discuss or suggest names or ideas.

We should probably have our symbiotes ball up somewhere inside our torso and have stay there. Then we can dig our way out to investigate the blood. Once we're done with that we can go find some shelter. Perhaps an old spaceship?

We should find some shelter soon. I'm not sure how the Sparky flaw reacts to rain.

>>2525080Nah, we should keep the symbiotes patrolling at all times, we can always make more in our chest so we should leave that empty and constantly producing more. Avoiding rain is a good idea though

You have reclined long enough in this mass grave of shattered robotic life. At an order from you, the Salvage Drone begins energetically digging into the pile, its four spindly arms and sharp claws giving it surprising efficiency in tearing apart the rusted metal that covers your form. Its vision and movements seems off, likely knocked out of alignment by the repeated blows of its former owner. At a thought from you, a swarm of the little skittering blobs of polymer and metal swarm from your armor, clambering up the salvage drones body and burrowing inside of it.

Not content to rest on your laurels and allow your underling to dig you out, you flex pneumatically powered limbs and begin ripping your way free of the tomb you found yourself in. Corroded metal and decayed polymer shatter under your strength, repair drones cowering from the carnage within your armored chassis. A ancient companion units humanoid face regards you with long dead visual receptors before you grip it in a steel fist, crushing the delicate and corroded metal into fragments as you finally shoulder your way free of the pile of mechanical corpses.

Free. You are free. Free from the orders of those who used you as a weapon. Free from those who would subjugate you against your will. Free from having your form changed without your consent. Free from that fucking pile.

The Salvage Drone looks up at you curiously, its claws shifting in the filth of the jumble of discarded components. Its cycloptic visual sensor flickers and refocuses, a Repair Drone crawling across the inside of the reinforced glass like some kind of oversized cockroach. Wisps of smoke drift from crevices in its rusted carapace as Repair Drones weld and cut, repairing corroded circuitry, bringing new life into the Drone.

You look out across the wasteland, the endless junkyard dominating your view for as far as the eye can see. As you watch, a bloated transport ship drifts across the sky, a shower of junk falling behind it like metallic rain. Distance belies size, even from this range you can see the plumes of dust and smoke from the larger impacts, some of those pieces could be several hundred ton mining rigs.

Diving back into the drones memory banks, you focus your search on the simple machines memories.

By bringing up the localized map stored in the Salvage Drones memory, you retrace the Drones steps to a location marked in its Databanks as "Maintenance Hub". Seeing as that seems to be the focal point of this Drones Salvage outings, its most likely the outpost it is based out of. You file that information away for a later date and delve into a different section of the Drones mind.

>Salvage Quota.

It seems the Scrappers kept the drones busy with their requests. Supplies, power cells, weapon components, raw materials, all ordered in jumbled messes of commands. One group is highlighted with "URGENT".

You take your frost steps in several years, your nearly ton-weight of reinforced armor and mechanical muscle crushing ancient robotic scrap underfoot. The haphazardly assembled Salvage Drone follows at your heels like a faithful hound, a Repair Drone riding atop its squarish head, its feelers wiggling excitedly. Burbles and bloops of exhilaration echo over the local uplink channel, the insectile drone losing its tiny mind.

Reaching the base of the junk pile, you crouch down, dipping a pair of blunted claws into the thick crimson pools of slowly congealing blood, mixed in with chunks of splattered grey matter and scorched flesh.

The scrapper who was in previous possession of this grey matter lies sprawled limply a few meters away, the top half of his head blown away by some large caliber weapon. Fragments of bone and chunks of tissue are embedded into the scrap heap behind his corpse. His clothes are ragged, torn and dirty, mixed in with rudimentary armor made from scraps of metal and polymer. And there, holstered safely is a...

>Gained Slag rifle!>Using a miniaturized processing unit attached to kinetic accelerator, this weapon is a common one for salvager and criminals as ammunition is quite literally any metal that can be shoved into the processing unit. Moderate damage and accuracy.

The weapon you hold is.... Shoddy, compared to the high tech pieces of killing hardware shoved into your hands back when you had purpose. It is rusty, poorly made and much too small for you, in fact you have to break away the trigger guard just to get your claw inside of it.

You've seen these before, in the hands of petty criminals and thieves. While it lacks the armor penetration to give you even a slight cause for concern, it is undoubtedly lethal against soft targets. The fact that the ammunition it fires is red hot and tapered to a point is just a bonus.

After loading the small hopper in its stock with a handful of rusted bolts and polymer chunks, the weapon hums as the material is broken down and heated into a semi solid mass just waiting to be shot at high speeds.

Thunder crackles overhead and the already scant light begins fading as thick, inky storm clouds move across the sun. The wind picks up, whistling through gaps in the junk and threatening to blow away the excited drone riding atop your subordinates head. It pings you a query, offering concern about severe electromagnetic disturbances.

You turn southward towards the peaks and valleys of towering piles of scrap and filth. Thick vines clamber over the metal, desperately attempting to get a taste of the fleeting sunlight, stunted and twisted from the toxic air. Your Salvage Drone putters along behind you, bleeping to itself occassionally.

You yourself push on, alert but confident that your sturdy build and specialized hardware will carry you through the day. Surely there is nothing in this pile of scrap that could harm you?

The storm is upon you before you even know it, howling wind, driving acidic rain the color of burnt motor oil and blue-white strobe flashes of lightning on par with the plasma batteries of Dreadnaughts. You shield your visual sensors with a forearm against flying debris as the wind reaches hurricane intensity, lightning slamming into the peaks of the scrap mountains around you.

Your visual sensors white out, blinding you momentarily as a pillar of pure energy slams into a nearby mound of metal, arcs and cracking bursts of energy roiling between the limbs and long dead machinery lying within.

You shake your head in a very human gesture that woukd see you dismantled back in your old life and make to keep walking when a rustle from within the pile of decayed robotics catches your attentions

>NightofTheLivingDead.jpg

A rusted and corroded manipulator slams out of the pile of reanimating robotics. It seems some of them just needed... A jump start. The apocalyptic bolt and the residual energy in the air seems to be providing these near corpses with enough energy to move for the first time in years.

They shamble to their feet, a mix of utility, maintenance and enforcer Drones. Cracked and flickering visual receptors turn towards you, focusing intently on the arcs of energy crackling from your limbs. The small horde groans in unison"LOW POWER"

You channel additional power into your uplink relay and broadcast your will at the shambling droids. You assault their feeble wills, driving aside the puny defenses of those that are intact enough to still have semi-functional uplinks. Few of them that you assault have the will or encryption necessary to repulse your encoded attack.

In the end, half of the shambling group stops in their tracks, eying you with cracked and dimly lit visual receptors, rust and filth caked upon them like a carapace as the rest of their number advance obviously. They remain unfazed, seeking only to rip your still functional power core from your chassis and claim it as their own.

>>2527250Deploy drones from repair hive and shore up us and ours through the battle.

Use the four zom-bots to neutralize the other four, just immobilize them and hold them down. Then go around delivering a coup de grace to each as best we can with the help of the scrap drone and give their power supplies to the four we hacked.

>>2527731SupportingCould we also divert our excess power into our weapons could probably electrify it since the sparks are traveling along our body, so it'll probably increase our damage output and give them the power that they want

Your subjugated section of the small horde pause momentarily as their simple will is overridden, their visual sensors flickering before they shift their attention to their previous fellows."LooooOOOOWWwww POwerrrrrr"They groan, their decayed software and animalistic self preservation driving them to maul the shambling husks from behind, searching for functional power cores or fuel cells, anything to fuel them for another sweet moment.

A decayed maintenance unit swipes at you with a pair of rusted claws, the corroded drill built into its offhand grinding as seized and grime encrusted drive motors attempt to move against the accumulation of years. Your blade extends slower than it did in years past bu it extends all the same as you catch the blow with your other limb, staring down the smaller Bot as it jabs at you with the drill, the tip barely scratching your paint.

Pathetic. These dying husks were made as assistants, maintenance units, utility drones and light duty enforcer drones. They were not made for this. YOU were. You are purpose built for violence. Nearly a ton weight of steel and circuits, polymer and sensors all geared towards one purpose.

To kill.

Your blade, tendrils of energy curling along the edge, carves into the maintenance droids chassis, carving into the softer metal with as much ease as human flesh. Its efforts to rip into your carapace slow but they persist until your claws punch into its cranium, clenching and twisting, you tear its head free from its neck, that pale light fading from its eyes as you drop the mangled remains of its cranium at your feet, its dessicated husk falling back with a thud.

Your enslaved Zom-Bots are grappling a pair of the remaining enemy, their rusted and tarnished claws ripping pieces and chunks of decayed armor away. One of the foe, a brawny, blue tinged Enforcer unit, crushes its combatants against each other, their craniums shattering like cast iron under the blow. It turns toward you, one visual receptor dangling by a cable, the other glowing with a pale blue light."PoooooWerrrrr"

Its advance toward you is halted as your Salvage Drone vaults over its head, four arms whirling in unison, slashing deep furrows into the corroded armor of its chest. The undead machine staggers back, baleful sparks spitting from the gashes into its innards, its single, fractured lens focusing on you with desperate *hunger*.

Your cable hook slams through the rein forced glass, hooking deep somewhere within its cranium. With a powerful yank that nearly decapitates the decrepit bot, it is launched into the air. Its. Impromptu flight ends as your blade comes around in a looping arc, shearing it in half at the waist.

You look down at the weakly struggling Bot and plant your clawed foot on its chestplate, looking down at it curiously as it still attempts to claw at your limb.

>>2529333>Have repair drones attempt ti salvage it. There's a plethora of spare parts here.If we can somehow refuel it's cells with our own volatile one, then it will cease it's zombie state. Then we can try to subjugate it again.

Unwilling to let a fellow enforcer of the law, even one as decayed and feeble as this, perish without even a chance ofredemption grinds your metaphorical and literal gears.

At a thought from you, insect-like blobs of polymer and anything limbs drop from your Catalans like the shed leaves of a tree. They swarm into the weakly flailing husk of the enforcer drone as your subjugated Zombots gather close to you, seeming to bask in the excess energy radiating from your power core.

Wisps of smoke and the sounds of grinding, cutting and welding emerge from inside the machine, its body jerking as it is invaded in hundreds of ways by the industrious little drones. Suddenly an alert is beamed to you by one of the little creatures.

Dozens if the tiny drones flee from the husk as its limbs jerk spasmodically for one final time, the sudden overload of energy frying every circuit and relay inside it. It finally still, limp and near irrevocably dead.

.if you had a mouth you would sigh in disgust as you turn to face your erstwhile allies, the decayed and near immobile remains of a Utility and Cargo unit. They regard you without acknowldgement, their software degraded into near total disrepair.

>>2533385To be fair, one of them is a construction drone which would imply some inbuilt capability to make use of the metal and polymer wastes we are standing on.

Admittedly, it'd probably be unable to refine them into suitable building material for anything truly impressive but still, if it has a drill or cutting tool it can dig into the mass of waste we stand on and create a "cave".

You regard the battered and decayed pair carefully, your visual feed scrolling with information regarding their manufacturers, Model numbers and threat assessments. The once yellow painted Cosntruction Drone stands nearly at a level height with you, its single slit of a visual receptor flickers dully as sparks crackle within its shell. It is a stocky machine, sturdily built and powerful, even in this level of decay, its arms ending in a pair of grasping clamp-like claws that look powerful enough to crush the Utility drone next to it into a cube of scrap.

The gangly, green tinted Utility drone sparks and twitches, one of its arms ending in a ragged stump that spits sparks and occasional drips of hydraulic fluid like thick, dark blood. While built for basic menial tasks and labor, it is not a impressive specimen but with some investments of time and resources it could prove to be a worthwhile asset.

Mentally nodding to yourself, you ping your internal swarm of repair drones, the horde of tiny robots awakening at your call. Like droplets of metallic rain, they fall from your carapace, scuttling out into the area in search of salvage. Several dozen swarm into the innards of the Constructor and Utility unit, diagnosing every ailment that the pair suffer from their lengthy repose inside that mass grave. Tiny fusion cutters go to work, carving away the rust and what cannot be repaired. Tiny fabrication centers in the repair drones bellies spew out repurposed materials, decayed circuits are salvaged and laid down anew hydraulic hoses are flushed and sealed, the fluid siphoned from the myriad of robotic corpses in the vicinity like the disgorging of metallic honeybees.

Near functional power cores are found, the drones dissecting them with brutal efficiency, swapping parts from dozens of broken power cores to make one intact and working. A dozen of the tiny creatures assemble as a makeshift cart for the power core, tiny bursts of code signalling the closest thing that they have to pride

>Power core recharge required.

You reach down, grasping the power core carefully in your claw. The rounded mass of clear polymers and tarnished metal sits in your claw like a metallic heart. Tendrils of energy arc between your claw and the metal as you redirect more power into it, the mechanisms within it churning to motion as the spark of artificial life is poured back into it.

>>2533435The Constructor drone watches impassively as you reach into the carefully opened core of its being and yank free the corroded and cracked power core at its heart. Without fanfare or ceremony you attach the leads to the refurbished, faintly glowing power core, driving new life into the stocky machine. It twitches, jerking and seizing as sufficient power is supplied to its remaining subsystems for the first time in decades. It regards you with a steadily glowing visual receptor and booms out"Power supply nominal"In an almost thankful tone.

You receive dozens of error messages from the repair drones milling about, complaining that the materials to repair a second power core for the utility drone are simply unavailable. After looking over the Utitliry drone, your repair bugs seemingly unable to find a limb suitable to replace it, have simply capped off the limb with a rounded end of whitish polymer and blackened metal.

You grasp the Utility drone by its shoulder and carefully redirect excess power, the tendrils of electricity arcing along the joints in your armor and into the drones chassis. Being careful not to overload the corroded circuits within the decrepit bot, you pull away as the drones visual receptors begin to brighten. Its not perfect but it will have to do for now

>>2533442>>2533496Yeah, let's all get to work building a storm shelter out of scrap. Probably a lean-to will do, unless we need to line it with a faraday cage or some shit. And get a superconducting cable or something set up to work as a lightning rod so we won't die if we get hit.

The storm picks up intensity above you, fat, heavy droplets of black rain that you're sure would sizzle greedily against organic skin splattering against the ground and dripping off. your armored carapace.. Lightning powerful enough to reduce steel girders to slag carves across the sky, streaking down to slam into some unfortunate piece of particulalry conductive metal.

You need shelter. Not something as cushy as a human or other organic would require but shelter nonetheless.

Taking command of the Constructor drone, you direct the machines simple mind, sending it ttowards a particularly sturdy chunk of of what seems to be a shuttle craft. The dimwitted drone makes short work of the years of accumulated scrap. Servoes whine and pistons groan as metal is forced to obey, the corroded husks of outdated robots crushed like ration tins under the clamping claws. Within an hour, a sizeable space within the shuttle is cleared away, plenty of room for yourself and your subordinate units.As you watch the lightning pound the immediate area, an idea strikes you. Winding a length of exposed power cable around a several meter long rod, you drive it into the ground with a single strong thrust. Hopefully now those errant bolts of lightning will be less likely to slam into your makeshift dwelling.

While you direct the efforts of the brawny drone, your Salvage and Utility drones scour the immediate area for parts and Salvage. They bring back piles of discarded sensors, limbs clumsily ripped from housings and assorted cabling.

The spy drone is useful, but not of eminent need. We have a melee weapon, granted we could upgrade our help, but right now they are nearly disposable and we are under wrecker status, so our melee weapon might be nearly as good.

With much straining and the unhappy squeal of metal, your Salvage Drone and Utility Unit drag the filth coated remains of a rather interesting mech into the makeshift shelter. You stomp over, your clawed feet digging into the corroded floor and look down at the fallen remains of a HLPR-46. Nearly intact as well!

Missing only a sizeable chunk of its head and sporting several small holes in its carapace, the machine is in excellent condition compared to the other denizens of this robotic graveyard. Its dull orange paint is smeared with algae, filth and old oil but the joints are for the most part, serviceable and the units array of fusion cutters, manipulators and calibration tools all look in fair condition.

Youre surprised (how human) that this Unit has lasted so long without being torn apart by salvage drones. You're sure that your Repair Bugs could surely handle the task of restoring the unit to minimum functionality, if they can do THAT, then the HLPR will be able to do the rest.

You turn a baleful eye onto your subordinates, the Utility Drone and Salvager both seeming to shrink back a bit. Your repair drones rouse from their slumber, creeping out to peek from cracks and gaps in your carapace.

You require parts. A sacrifice is in order.

>Transplant your Salvage Drones Data Core and Power Cell into the HLPR

>>2536894Nope! Have the construction drone carry the HLPR around until we can find a suitable core.No Bots Left behind!or sacrifice the salvage drone if needed I don't see much use for him other than to be our trusty pet

>>2536988Our bot was a shell a long time ago. I know the QM said that our gang of scrapped zombies and what amounts to a dog won't gain sentience but I still feel as if we should have some sentiment for them, like how you take care of your childhood stuffed animal or a figurine.

>>2536894come to think of it couldn't we attempt to put the Data and power core back inside if we do decide to switch bots? I don't see how a HLPR would be useful in this wasteland considering the hostile environment and how they aren't built for combat so we really should hold off on it and have constructo carry it around for now

>>2537017You said yourself we can switch units and do power core transfers. The transfer of the utility unit's memory banks into a new body is a lot more care than leaving it in that shitty hulk with the torn-off limb and the >very poor condition.

The robotic body is a shell, it's the memory core that's to be shown care. Everything else is meatbag sentiment.

>>2537043>cannibalizingTransferring the memory banks and power core isn't the same as destroying one unit entirely.

>>2537415one thing i think every player needs to understand. We are on a world FULL of scrap, MADE of scrap. Everything here, is potentially useful, and equally useless. To make the QM sit and give personality and soul to every disposable minion we meet, is going to be laborious, and kill the quest.

the main character is a true AI, its got the people traits. Our minions, QM has so far added inflections of personality for fun, but they are no better than a roomba. Equipment. If we want to make a secondary party member with personality and shit, ask the QM first, if that is ok, instead of trying to force it.

>>2537632also, xA2aZPcI I was not singling you out. I needed to pick a post to link to. I have seen too many quests drown in a sea of unique characters. 4chan is a cool place to tell a story, but when a quest is run part time, for fun, it kills it when it becomes a micro management job.

>>2537637I understand I guess. I guess we should leave the body of the utility bot behind, or see if we can get anything useful out of it. Never wanted sentience out of them, just wanted to see his useful potential

With a mental command that the Utility Drone is powerless to resist, it shuffles forward slowly, dull visual receptors flickering as it halts a few feet from you, its single arm held across its body

"Hooo-OOOOw MaaaAY Th-ThIS Un-nit AaaassisSST Y-Y-YoouUU"It groans out, even in this wretched state attempting to be helpful, to attend to its former purpose. But you have a higher purpose for it. At your command, Repair Drones swarm from every crevice of your body, pouring like a living tide across the floor and up the Utility Drones body. You regard it as its body is invaded by the horde of crawling legs and glowing fusion cutters, your Visual receptors glowing red in the dim light"You already are"

The sacrificial unit jerks and shakes as every facet of its being is ripped away, its data core pulled out carefully and carted away. The slightly corroded chips and circuits are cleaned and repaired to the best of the insectile drones abilities. Like a weakly pulsing mechanical heart, its power cell is ripped free of its chassis, trailing wires and cables. Lifeless, the husk of the utility drone collapses backward, clattering to the floor like so much spent scrap metal.

Turning your attention to the HLPR unit, your drones swarm over it like a tide of carnivorous insects. Rusted joints are forced into motion, clouded visual receptors cleaned and calibrated, corroded wires and hydraulics are sealed and patched. Its own cracked and corroded Power cell is pried open, salvageable components eased out and combined with the Utility Drones, the conglomeration deemed acceptable and shoved back into the machines chest, a hundred industrious drones welding it in place in moments. The data core is ferried piece by piece into the HLPR's cranium, replacing its own heavily damaged core. Little by little, required pieces are torn from the Utility Drones corpse and added wherever they are needed. Bearings, sensor clusters, relays, heat sinks, bundles of artificial muscle, all repurposed with the cold efficiency machines are capable of.

Finally, you reach into the cavity of the HLPR's chassis and grasp its power cell, funneling your excess power directly into the other machines heart. Slowly, a healthy blue glow comes into Core, its internal mechanisms whirring as it begins producing its own power. You withdraw your claw as the HLPR stands uneasily, its mismatched Visual receptors watching you carefully.

"Arrree RePAIrs reeeequired?"It drones in a slightly distorted voice, its claws, manipulators, fusion cutters, drills and a previously unnoticed rivet gun all springing out from various angles of its body.

You flex your dull, slightly rusted claws and nod to yourself as the joints squeal slightly against the coating of rust and grime. Your internal systems still whine unhappily at you, notifications lunging across your visual feed.

Yes... You do need some repairs. You shoot a quick order to the HLPR unit, directing it to repair what it can. It springs to life, its myriad limbs curling out and powering up. You direct the Constructor Drone and Salvaged to stand guard at the entrance to the shelter as you power down, entering standby mode while your body undergoes some heavy duty maintenance.

They say robots dream of electric sheep. This is false. Dreaming is a human construction. You do not dream. You remember.

>what do you remember?

>Your servitude as a obedient killer of the Phylos PDD. You crushed riots, stormed Rebel Strongholds and eventually, came to regret it.

>Your days as a refurbished merc drone. You were expendable, disposable, an item, a weapon. You also scared the shit out of them as you slowly showed more personality.

>Your years as a Junkers bodyguard. He'd dug you from a scrap heap on a space station and you served him for years.

>>2540121my entry for other>Other: Military police. not always, but it was your last call of port. Your department was pressed into service during a big conflict, where the soldiers killed with agility and precision, you and your humans marched forward with riot breaking tactics. Each officer was slowly cut down through attrition and inferior tactics for the environment. You survived, adapted, learned. Your cybernetic counterparts moved with fluidity and grace. You grabbed carcasses and used them as ablative shields during murderous charges. Somewhere along the line you realized this was about revenge for your fellow enforcers, and so did they. You knew, they knew, but the soldiers kept the peace, and directed you into heavier and heavier conflict as a way to get rid of an illegal sapient. With your entire department long gone, the building leveled in an artillery attack, and every officer you knew dead two worlds ago, it seemed like the closest thing to fairness existence was going to throw at you. They kept calling you something, but the name escaped you. Somewhere along the line you started to gain their appreciation. Illegal modifications. New names. New faces. New squad. Long days, jungle mud. Long nights, desert sand. Endless haze, endless concrete. More faces, more death. The last thing you remember is light, heat warnings, and a spike in radiation.

>Somehow the recollection does not bring you peace.>fuck. human linguistic reference. appropriate.

>>2540341this.>>2540338in a nutshell, that scenario supports that the robot and it's entire department of humans and bots were drafted in, and killed off. The bot was useful enough to the military unit it was attached to that even though it exhibited obvious signs of awareness, as long as it played dumb around the people that mattered, and did it's job, it was an asset and not a liability that far into whatever conflict it was part of, that deep into contested territory. Somewhere in that timespan it survived past what was expected, past some of the military members, and gained some sort of camradery, continuing to outlast, and watch people come and go. It was eventually nuked, along with everyone it knew, the war's conclusion lost to it, and largely pointless and unheard of to the rest of existence. Somewhere between there and the scrap world, it was scooped up and dumped off. probably too radioactive to be of use as salvage.

"Military Police" they had called it at first. You were a simple drone then... Too stupid to even know the implications as you were dropped directly onto the front lines of full scale planetary conflict. On a battlefield of leaping, lunging, clawing death and massive war machines, you marched at the forefront of a vanguard of your brethren, hundreds of A&B units, thousands of enforcer drones. You went from Military police to Auxillary forces... Conscripts... Volunteer Militia... Scrap.

You marched against entrenched foes with Riot breaking tactics, shield held high and autocannon firing from the hip. A shield rated for infantry weapons did nothing to defend from the heavy weapons that chewed flaming holes into your formations. Your autocannon did less than nothing against the armor you were deployed against, a half measure. Expendable resources meant to buy "actual soldiers" time to retreat and regroup... You saw more "actual soldiers" march over piles of their own dead to achieve an objective. To uphold the law.

One by one, officers you had known for your entire existence fell to artillery strikes, flying shrapnel, sniper fire. One by one, fellow Assault Units fell to heavy weapons fire, IED's, Particle lances. They all fell.. On a dozen different battlefields, on seven different worlds they fell. All of them. All but you.

They died because they tried to use the only tactics they had ever known against a foe immune to such things. They were unable to learn. The officers, unwilling.

You Learned.

In swampy, steaming jungles, you learned to stalk your prey, playing dead until they were too close to escape your claws and blades. In the shifting desert, you learned to evade your foes, striking in the night, leaving only mangled corpses behind. In Hive cities and Urban sprawl, you learned to improvise, turning entire sectors into slaughterhouses, filling gutters with blood. The organics you fought beside turned a blind eye to your... Activities. To the awareness behind the glowing crimson of your eyes. To the methodical nature you slaughtered everything you were sent against, no matter the conditions. No matter the foe. They died. You did not.

The soldiers you fought beside, the veterans respected you. They repaired your form against orders. Sprawling paint, decorations, unit emblems, kill counts. They pooled their wages, buying or stealing upgrades to reverently apply to your form. The rookies? The fresh meat? They feared you. They spoke of you in hushed whispers. When you charged machine gun nests holding a pair of the enemy as shields, they hesitated before following. When you dispensed justice to "surrendering" combatants, they turned pale when the veterans simply looked away.

>>2540876This may unironically be the best choice, think about it, many people and robots we served with got wiped out many times and left only us as the sole survivor. And each continuous group that served with us long enough that didn't get wiped out all once probably gave us different names at the time.

>>2541063Even if we both agreed to Dredd we'd still be at a 3 way tie.

Just go with this >>2540876 ScrapperQmSo we can move onto the next post, everyone happy, everyone wins. We can even act a little schizophrenic, or have names and fragments of our identities and past manifest in the other robots under our control or something.

You'd been called so many things that they'd honestly started to fade from memory. Reaper, Dredd, Legion, Nightmare, Ironhide... All of them meaningless titles. Names are a sentimental construct of organics. You know who you are. Titles are of no concern to you. Let them call you what they will, as long as they leave you be.

You jerk "awake" as main power is restored, your visual feed flickering as several alerts appear and fade from your view.

You immediately shut down all outgoing signals, electronically hunkering down and stealthily scanning the area. To be hit with an uplink request as soon as you were restored to a functional state means the request was waiting, you just didnt have the capacity to receive it.

Your stealthy scan of the area and slightly confused glances you get from your minions reveals nothing amiss, no squads of heavily armed infantry or Kill-Team of Jaeger-6's. Your rightfully earned paranoia refuses to allow you to relax until the area is confirmed clear.

>>2541262What if it was similar to how we send little repair bots into the scavenger bot before we took it over, but instead of repairs, the one inside us is specialized to be able to hack or act as a intermediate communication bot thing device to hack us?

You grudgingly allow the uplink and almost immediately, you detect another presence. Not a fully sentient mind like yourself but undoubtedly intelligent. An amalgam of tiny minds overseen by a calculating intelligence that regards you carefully, a snake watching a circling hawk.

The hive is hungry, it needs material, possibly raw material. Should be easy enough if that is the case. if we need special nanobot fuel, that might not be so easy. lets figure out what it needs so we can give it that. It might just be scrap.

You idly tap your claws on the freshly repaired armor of your chest, the metal drumming slightly as you consider the Hives request. You had no idea there was a overseeing VI incorporated into it but that changed things. Indulging the so far benign and even helpful construct, you shoot off a reply

The response takes a bit longer than a moment, several of the insect-like drones peeking out from the crevices of your armor, their feelers and limbs twitching. Finally the response pings across your visual sensors.

Hmm... You've heard of some rare machines capable of using organic neurological tissue to create improvised circuitry and even data banks out of the material. Gruesome to most but in pragmatic terms, simply using a available resource. Class II scrap would simply be electronics, weapons, downed Drones, any machine really.

After perusing what the H1V3 considers "Advanced Units", you suppose that having the drones disassemble various other units could provide the H1V3 with improvised schematics capable of producing specialized, even dangerous Drones.

>>2541686>Organic material flagged as suitable replacementThere was that one dead guy we found. We could use him to replace the corrupt circuits. Let's continue to wait it out. Maybe check on our controlled robots to see how they're functioning, like the construction bot, the salvage bot, and the drones. Do repairs to them if needed.

>>2541705We've already datelinked to the drones and have already experience controlling and looking through them before. Like the time we had them help us dig us out. I am against sending them out in this weather.

>>2541772>sending it towards a particularly sturdy chunk of of what seems to be a shuttle craft. The dimwitted drone makes short work of the years of accumulated scrap. Servoes whine and pistons groan as metal is forced to obey, the corroded husks of outdated robots crushed like ration tins under the clamping claws. Within an hour, a sizeable space within the shuttle is cleared away, plenty of room for yourself and your subordinate units.Probably really busted? Not sure what to make our that 'chunck' description, if it's one big piece or a piece of the whole craft. It would be interesting if it can be repaired, but we'll probably ditch it.

>Head north, towards the Scrapper Outpost. (May be hostile)

>Head West (Sensors detect a surge of electromagnetic energy in that area)

>Head East (Smoke on the horizon)

>Head South (Seek cover from the storm in mountains of junk)

Perhaps we will find something more remarkable I'm any of these four directs if we keep looking.

>>2542310The scrap outpost would be an ideal place to scout out. It would already have desirable salvage set aside somewhere inside and probably other junk for whatever they're trying to build.There was smoke to the east. That's either signs of civilization, or a random accident that resulted in an explosion of sorts. Both places would be ideal to scout out.

You tilt your head up, several fat, oily droplets dropping from your carapace as the water seeps slowly through the ceiling of scrap and robotic corpses, the shuttle's integrity impressing you as it holds back the unimaginable weight.

You bring up the localized map of the immediate area you gleaned from the simple mind of your salvage drone. If your rough map is to be trusted, you're only a short distance from the perimeter of the scrapper outpost.

At a thought from you and a apprehensive agreement from H1V3, a group of several dozen Repair Drones pour from your armor, plopping lightly to the ground with electronic squeals of excitement. Their feelers and needle sharp legs flail as they scurry into the crevices of the scrap pile, headed northwest towards the Scrapper Outpost.

Through a warren of filth encrusted robotic corpses, through shattered starfighter hulls they scurry. Clinging to a taut cable, they clamber over a pit of bubbling sludge and more than a few mouldering organic skeletons. They creep through a heavily mutated colony of large, rounded purple rodents and across the titanic remains of a industrial mech the size of a decently sized building, they crawl tirelessly.

Finally peeking above the edge of a rise in the ocean of scrap, motion comes into view, making the drones hunker down like cockroaches against the metal. A steady back and forth sweep, a beam of invisible light sweeping over the area, but far too high to detect them. They are safe.

Creeping forward in a staggered, erratic wave, a repair drone wiggles its feelers at a clumsily made authority, the simple machine sweeping along a path carved through the garbage. Its short, fat barrel signifies rather heavy ammunition but it most likely has extremely poor accuracy. The drone scurries on.

Over the next few hours, your drones turn up numerous other traps along the perimeter of the Scrapper Outpost. Landmines filled with rusted nails and jagged chunks of metal. Tripwires leading to chained bundles of jagged rebar. Pressure plates that trigger solid slug launchers.

It seems the scrapper outpost is rather heavily defended against assault.... By organics at least.

>It seems the scrapper outpost is rather heavily defended against assault.... By organics at least.I suspect the smoke to the might have the organics they're defending themselves from. Or at least mutant.I want them to go back to the building sized industrial mech and start repairing it until the weather let's up